Rejection Causes Burnout
Welcome to The Nelson Pages—a monthly digital publication designed to support professionals who want to lead with more intention, clarity, and purpose. Through real stories, practical insights, and honest reflection, we aim to help you grow as a leader while breaking the patterns that no longer serve you—or your team.
Whether you're a seasoned executive, a new manager, a business owner, or simply someone passionate about personal growth, The Nelson Pages offers guidance and inspiration for the kind of leadership that drives real change.
Our newsletter is broken into 3 parts: research, storytelling, and practical application. Each section is designed to deepen your understanding.
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Picture of a pen and notebook with crumpled paper next to it.
Our first issue of The Nelson Pages begins with a topic common to all of us: Rejection.
Rejection Explained, Explored and Embraced
As a middle manager (you manage a team and you have a boss and/or a board), consider the role rejection plays in your work. Most of the time, rejection is hiding in plain sight, directly impacting your daily interactions and making significant contributions to your wellbeing and productivity. You might start to feel emotionally exhausted, cynical, or ineffective. Whether you know it or not, rejection is fueling your sense of burnout.
“So, what is rejection? How does it show up in the workplace and impact our work? And what can we do about it?”
Rejection Explained
Whether given or received, acts of exclusion - dismissing ideas, denying projects, overlooking contributions, and failing to acknowledge concerns - have an impact on the work environment. Given their role, managers likely experience both: “manager-as-rejected” and “manager-as-rejector.” Distinctly different, we will save “manager-as-rejected” for another time and take a deeper dive into “manager-as-rejector.”
Rejection Explored
My experiences as a senior executive have taught me that the “manager-as-rejector” role is common and often not considered as a contributor to burnout.
Imagine that one of your employees comes to you with an idea they have been tinkering with for months. You want to be supportive. You have invested time and energy in creating positive working relationships. You remind your team daily that innovation is the next frontier. But, after listening carefully to the idea, you have to tell the employee that the idea is not approved. No matter the rationale - vision misalignment, resource constraints, or feasibility issues - you have rejected the idea, the employee. Now, you are worried about a loss in trust and motivation.
If you reject ideas frequently, both in large decisions (deprioritizing employee projects) and smaller decisions (ignoring brainstorming ideas), your internal conflict is compounding exponentially. You’re plagued by concerns about demotivating employees, losing productivity, and stifling innovation. Over a period of time, guilt builds up, creating self-doubt and decision fatigue. You may actually stop asking for suggestions and ideas from your team. For many managers, author included, dispensing rejection to your employees over and over again, comes at a cost – manager burnout.
Rejection Embraced
As a manager, you cannot say yes to every employee idea, but how you handle rejection matters. Responding with care requires self-awareness. Managers face a high volume of interactions throughout the day - many automatic. How many of those lead to rejection?
Two paths to consider when thinking about how a manager internalizes rejection are “failure and stop” or “feedback and merge.”
In the “failure and stop” path, the manager perceives their actions as a failure to the team. As a result, they stop engaging with the team and the team’s work. This is the quickest and shortest path to burnout. In the “feedback and merge” path, the manager perceives their actions as feedback to the team. As a result, they merge with the team, offering alternative options and/or modifications to the suggested idea. This path helps to keep burnout at bay.
These two phenomenon are depicted in the graphs below. The red line is the "feedback and merge" path. The blue line is the "failure and stop" path. Clearly the red path ensures stronger productivity and overall more positive outlook.
So, how do you engage in the “feedback and merge" path as a manager?
Managers should start by providing an honest and detailed assessment (feedback) of the presented idea. This critical step supports the self-efficacy of the manager and the team member (Guido Alessandri et al., 2018). The manager should also provide authentic support to the team member(s), spending time learning “the origin story” or the why behind the idea (merge). The “feedback and merge” path supports moving from “no” to “not now” or “not yet.”
If done well, your actions as a manager will empower your employees and yourself.
Rejection: Going Deeper Through Storytelling
Toss the Pellets When this city girl moved to the country, I was most excited about my pond! That little girl at the zoo - begging for quarters, flinging fish pellets, and watching those shiny scales surface and scoop up their snack - finally didn’t need that quarter anymore. I was thrilled. I bought pond plants, a biofilter, a mermaid fountain, a quirky little pirate ship, and food pellets (of course). I was set.
That first spring I started with about ten fish. First thing I learned was that my fish didn’t like pellets. I tossed a few in the water expecting to see them surface and gobble them up like they did at the zoo. Well, they didn’t. Spit them right out and swam away. It was only colorful flakes for them. Then, as I attempted to find a place to anchor my ship, I realized pirates are for the seas not for ponds. In that first year, I began to understand a great deal about maintaining a pond ecosystem - water quality, filtration, winterizing. Pondmaster, by my own election.
Naturally, with my new found expertise, I added a few more fish the next season. I knew to acclimate my new fish to the water to avoid shock, so I placed the bag they traveled in from the pet store in the water and waited. My native fish poked the bag and swam around, clearly curious. When I set my new inhabitants free, chaos ensued. My resident fish started chasing my new additions, pursuing aggressively, relentlessly. Fish just zipped around, darted here and there, dodged rocks, lily pads, and each other. My new fish fled, then hid. Apparently, my acclimation studies overlooked the impact on the existing community.
For the next few weeks, I never saw my new fish. Worried, I tried to coax them out, throwing food near their presumed hiding places and tossing small stones to lure their curiosity. Then, it happened. I saw some hiding under a lily pad. They were out from under the rocks and fountain - testing the waters. They still weren’t coming out or up for my food, but they were hanging in there - surviving in the ecosystem I built.
Some more time passed, and one day, my fish were all just there - gliding gracefully through the pond together.
And none of them like those pellets. But that’s okay; I’ve got their flakes.
Apply the Learning: A Rejection Case Study
Jared is a new senior manager at PlayED, a 200-person education furniture company. He has been in his new role, leading the product development division, for almost 4 months and deeply cares about the mission of PlayED. Jared, in his early forties, holds a bachelor's degree and an MBA from a reputable university. He has completed multiple management training programs and brings extensive experience in product development.
Jared’s team of direct reports are:
Tonie - Product Lead: Recently joined the team (under 1 month) from a small start-up focused on the user experience (UX) for various product organizations.
Chris - Product Lead: New to the team (under 2 months), previously with another company’s product development team.
Margaret - Product Lead: Veteran team member (4 years) with extensive experience leading product development.
Sam - Project Manager: Experienced team member (3 years) with a strong background in overseeing all aspects of project management.
Jared has been tasked with creating a UX process of three new products for PlayED with the goal to ensure the products satisfy and delight students and teachers. Jared scheduled a meeting with his team to launch the new project. Seven business days before the meeting, Jared provided his team an agenda with meeting outcomes and pre-work, which included research information, a budget, and a project plan proposal.
On the day of the meeting, the team convened in a conference room. Jared began on time, sharing that the goal was to finalize a process for completing the task and emphasizing the importance of hearing all voices in the conversation. “This includes defining actions, owners, milestones, and decision points,” he explained. The group nodded in agreement. Jared then asked the group, “So what do you think of the draft plan?”
Chris and Margaret jumped in to respond. Sam offered additional suggestions and was interrupted by Margaret. Jared asked Margaret to elaborate on her last comment, and she shared additional details about how the team has taken on similar projects in the past. Chris shared how he worked through comparable projects in his previous role. Tonie nodded while Chris offered his thoughts.
Jared felt like the conversation was moving in a positive, energetic direction; he was pleased.
When Sam began to inquire about timelines for completion, Chris responded, “Don’t worry about that. We can implement some of the projects simultaneously.” Chris then turned to Jared and asked, “Can we get some capacity on loan from another team for a short sprint?”
“I don’t see why not, “ Jared replied. “How much capacity do we think we will need?”
“Probably four sprint cycles,” Chris responded.
“I think five or six cycles,” added Margaret.
“That will be too expensive for our current budget,” Sam contributed.
Chris and Margaret looked at each other, stood up, and went to the room’s white board and started mapping out lines of work. Jared soon joined them, shortly followed by Tonie. Sam remained at the table, taking notes from the white board. The small group of four bantered back and forth, outlining next steps, actions, and owners.
After about 20 minutes, the group at the board agreed that they had a clear plan. Jared announced, “I think we got it. Let’s put this plan into action.” The group at the board agreed and joined Sam back at the table. Jared adjourned the meeting, congratulating the team on an excellent exchange.
As the team packed up, Tonie turned to Sam and said, “That was a really great meeting, right?”
“I guess,” Sam replied, revealing her frustration. “I tried to share my thoughts, but, as usual, I was ignored.” Without another word, she walked out of the conference room.
Concerned, Tonie approached Jared to relay what Sam said. Jared was caught off guard - he had not realized this had happened.
“Thank you for letting me know about this, Tonie,” Jared responded.
“What are you going to do?” Tonie asked.
“I am not sure,” Jared admitted, sinking into his chair.
Case study questions:
What did Jared do well serving as the manager of his team?
What are some possible challenges Jared might be facing as he is leading his team?
How is rejection showing up from peers on the team?
How is rejection showing up directly from Jared?
Should Jared do anything? If so, what should he do? If not, why?
What would you do?
See you next month!
Alessandri, G., Perinelli, E., De Longis, E., Schaufeli, W. B., Theodorou, A., Borgogni, L., Caprara, G. V., & Cinque, L. (2018). Job burnout: The contribution of emotional stability and emotional self-efficacy beliefs. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 91(4), 823–851. https://doi.org/10.1111/joop.12219
